“He that gives good advice, builds with one hand; he that gives good counsel and example, builds with both; but he that gives good admonition and bad example, builds with one hand and pulls down with the other.” -Francis Bacon

My Hottest Take

It is my hottest take: the hardest part about unsolicited advice isn’t giving it… or even getting it. 

The hardest part is discerning between the advice that only sounds good, and the advice that will actually help you make the right decisions. 

And if you’re a people pleaser, it’s even harder. 

Decisions, decisions…

I remember being seventeen, and feeling paralyzed in this endless matrix of possibilities that was my life after high school.

What would I study? Where would I apply? Which friends were doing what? Could I succeed in that field? Was I smart enough? Would I get in?

Then, on top of the endless list of questions I didn’t have the answer to, it seemed everyone else wanted to provide an answer for me. 

Of course, it came from the best place, but how on earth was I supposed to sift through it all and get to a meaningful answer?

It was then, that as a seventeen-year-old about to get thrown into the “real world”, that I learned something crucial: you can’t take everyone’s advice. 

I mean, it’s literally impossible. 

“Do what you’re good at” was often at odds with “study something that will keep the doors open”. 

“Choose the safest option” conflicted wildly with “go where you will find your ‘tribe’”.

“Relax, and savor the last months of high school” opposed “study hard for your A-level exams”.

I was perplexed, and the illusion that I could somehow make everyone happy made me feel even worse about not achieving it. 

Fast forward years later, and I’m pretty happy with my decisions. 

So my advice for anyone getting the deluge of unsolicited opinions?

Learn how to decide what advice to take, because not all of it applies in your specific context.

“I was perplexed, and the illusion that I could somehow make everyone happy made me feel even worse about not achieving it.”

Who can give you good advice?

Generally, my first instinct is to consider the source of advice. 

Ask: Does the person giving this advice have experience that backs up what they’re saying?

If you’re applying to medical school, and someone practicing medicine gives you advice, their opinion is probably more credible than someone who instead studied accounting. 

Similarly, if you’re having a baby, maybe it would be wise to take parenting advice from your mother rather than your aunt who never had children. 

Maybe a person with incredible mobility and energy at seventy-six years old will have some good health advice, compared with a thirty-year old who is out of breath just walking up the stairs. 

Consider whether the person giving you advice is speaking out of turn, or even out of judgment.

Are they jealous of you? 

Do they worry about how your failure will reflect on them? 

Is there a way in which they live vicariously through you, and need you to satiate their regrets?

Do they love you, and want you to not make a terrible mistake?

Once you know that even someone with good intentions can give bad advice, take the time to really think about how heavily to weigh what another person thinks. 

Making Space

I used to make big decisions loudly, seeking constant reassurance, even from strangers. Even when I “knew” my decision, I didn’t allow myself to move into action. Not truly. 

I would second-guess and ask for yet another opinion, even though I was really only hoping for more permission to pursue the choice I already wanted to make. 

Instead, here’s what I should have done, and what I do now, whenever I make an important decision: pause. 

No, don’t bring it up in conversation with your friends at brunch. Don’t call your mom at 3am to get her opinion. 

Not yet, at least. 

Wait a few days, a week or two. 

Let the feeling of your choices settle in your body. Are you excited? A bit nervous? Does it fill you with dread? 

Sometimes the feelings conflict, and sometimes they tell you everything you need to know, but regardless, at least now you know where you stand, how you feel.

Let that be your North star, because, after all, this is your life. 

Some of the WORST advice I’ve ever gotten

Now, let me tell you some advice I’ve gotten in my own life that sounded good at first, but ended up being confusing and misleading at the time. 

#1: “Be realistic.”

What counts as “realistic” is subjective, and often, the advice to “be realistic” just reinforces acting from a place of fear. 

Building the life of your dreams takes courage. 

…So don’t worry too much about being “realistic”.

Instead, take the biggest risks when you’re young and unencumbered with dogs, kids, and a mortgage! 

If you fail, you still have the flexibility and time to start over again. 

(WARNING: In a different context and for a different person, maybe this is great advice.) 

#2: “Speak your mind.”

Sometimes you don’t know what on earth you’re talking about. 

So have the grace to at least know when you don’t know what you’re talking about. 

In those cases, keep your mouth shut and listen.

(WARNING: In a different context and for a different person, this is the exact encouragement they need.) 

#3: “Stray from the crowd.”

Figure out why the crowd is going that way before straying. 

I mean, there is probably a reason. Once you know the reason, then decide whether to rebel. 

After all, conformity pays sometimes.  

…And don’t worry- there’s still lots more opportunities to stand apart.

(WARNING: As everyone’s moms’ have recited at least once, “If So-And-So jumped off a bridge, does that mean you would too?”) 

#4: “Forgive and forget.”

When people show you who they are, listen. 

Don’t constantly put yourself back in the same situation to be hurt again. 

Even if it isn’t as extreme as blocking, asking or manufacturing space from someone so that you can heal is not petty. 

It’s protecting your peace, which is more important than maintaining a connection that is hurting you. 

(WARNING: In a different context and for a different person, it might pay to let go of a grudge.) 

#5: “No pain, no gain.”

Actually, sometimes you’re making your life harder than it has to be, and the “pain” is completely unnecessary.

Sometimes pain is just pain and sacrifice is just sacrifice. 

We often expect suffering to be paired with delayed gratification, but there are a lot of cases when the two are not tied at all. 

Worse yet, sometimes making life “hurt more” can even sabotage your success and happiness. 

(WARNING: In a different context and for a different person, it will pay to push yourself outside of your comfort zone to discover what you didn’t even realize you were capable of.) 

#6: “Never give up.”

There are times when breaking up, getting divorced, quitting your job, saying no to a commitment, and letting people down is actually better.

Why?

Because it means saying “yes” to what’s actually right for you when the time comes.

Let’s not make it “never” give up or “always” give up, but rather, know when to give up.

(WARNING: Sometimes it’s best to persevere through a struggle.) 

#7: “Be as productive as possible.”

Being fully immersed in “life” is often inefficient.

However, paradoxically, these inefficiencies can make life more full in the long term. 

Spending less time responding to emails in the evening could mean you are less “productive”, but more present with your family. 

Taking time to read and have a cup of tea means you’re not on Instagram keeping up with the reels your mom is sending you, but it also means you get to sit outside with your dog and an army of potted herbs, and breathe in fresh air. 

Every time you spend your time doing a task, you are choosing to not be doing something else. 

Think about what you would rather say no to, because if you don’t, the world will make the decision for you.

When we measure our life worth against a metric that prioritizes being busy over being truly alive, we end up sacrificing our humanity. 

And in the end, what is all the productivity for if you can’t embrace the part of life that is actually about “living”?

(WARNING: Pay your bills.) 

“Every time you spend your time doing a task, you are choosing to not be doing something else.”

#8: “Try to assimilate so you can make friends.”

Don’t change who you are just to hold onto friends who don’t even care about you that much.

People will respect you and be attracted to you more if you lean into your flavor of weird rather than away from it. 

And in staying true to your weirdness, you will attract even cooler, more aligned friends.

(WARNING: This means you still have to go outside and talk to new people.) 

Take Ownership Of Your Decisions

I’m under no illusions that it’s incredibly scary to lead a life that doesn’t follow the cookie-cutter mold society has laid out for us. 

It’s scary to think you might make a huge, irreversible mistake that dooms you for all eternity. 

Wandering away from the “normal” path that all your childhood friends are taking is lonely. 

It’s so easy to second-guess yourself, to feel despondent when your unprecedented courage is met only with suffocating doubt.

The archetypal hero’s journey tells us that once we slay the dragon, we are meant to ride off into the sunset living happily ever after. 

However, real life is more messy than that, and the certainty that you made the right choice is not something that comes all at once. 

It’s slow, it’s gradual, it’s a pendulum swing from one day to the other. 

But when you take ownership of your decisions, and of what advice to consider when you make them, you will know that regardless of whether you make the biggest mistake, or unlock the highest bliss, the decision will belong fully to you.

“…if you can tell the difference between good advice and bad advice, you don’t need advice.” – Laurence J. Peter

Thought to Action

1. Track Energy, Not Interests: For one week, note what gives you energy and what drains it. Patterns reveal more than labels.
2. Run a Passion Experiment: Choose one small action that tests a curiosity (not a career decision). Give it a deadline.
3. Separate Skill From Identity: You don’t need to be “good” at something for it to matter to you.
4. Design a Tiny Version of the Dream: Ask: what would the smallest, cheapest version of this life look like right now?
5. Let Passion Be Built: Treat interest as something you cultivate, not something you wait to discover.

Sources

No external sources were used for this post.

The post The Comprehensive List Of The Worst Advice I’ve Ever Gotten appeared first on Green Also Green.

“Being honest may not get you a lot of friends, but it’ll always get you the right ones.” -John Lennon

I had no friends. 

I used to think I didn’t have the energy for socializing. 

Or rather, friendship was the thing I must sacrifice to get ahead.

Having lots of friends was for extroverts who weren’t focused on their goals. It was a distraction, a way to fill time when you were not working on something interesting. 

Then, I evolved towards seeing it as something that only happened after a period of diligent isolation-  a nirvana reached after years of masochistic solitude. 

You grind, then you relax. 

Work hard, then play hard. 

I was afraid…

It took a lot of time to realize that isolating myself wasn’t entirely a manifestation of discipline. Actually, it was also a manifestation of fear. 

I was afraid to step out of my comfort zone, to open up to others and maybe realize I was the shallow one. 

If I had only tried, I could have held an intelligent conversation with my peers. It would have likely made me happier, less stressed.

Now, with a tragic retrospective paradox, I even think it could have helped me get to where I wanted to go even faster. 

Fast-Forward

Fast forward to 2026, and I’m happy to announce that I’ve built some beautiful friendships which I look forward to nurturing even after graduation. 

I have made memories with my friends. 

We have traveled together, lived together, wrestled with life together. 

Most of all though, my friends have inspired me to step into an even better version of myself. Around them, I don’t shrink or “assimilate”. 

I actually want to reach even higher. 

What happened in between?

Looking back, the way I feel now about the importance of friendship in my life has gone through a huge evolution.

It’s a complete 180 degree turn from what I used to think about connection with others. 

In fact, where I used to feel constricted, I now feel liberated. 

Turns out, it’s just as Marcus Aurelius states, “The impediment to action advances action. What stands in the way becomes the way.” 

I used to see friendship as an energy drain, but now I see it as an energy source. 

So what happened to change my mind?

#1: Identifying the types of friendships that would add energy

A big step for me was realizing that not all friendship is created equal.

Sometimes friends are there for just a season of your life. Other times friends have known you since you were still learning how to spell your name, and will nevertheless be invited to your wedding one day. 

There are friends that you outgrow because you no longer form the same clique you did in high school. Then there are the friends who you meet later in life, who you probably wouldn’t have given any thought as a kid. 

Aristotle gives us a name for all these different types of friendship, and a roadmap for what these relationships can mean. 

Friendships Of Utility (“But What Can You Do For Me?” Energy)

Remember being in elementary school and watching what other people pulled out of their lunchboxes? 

There would be the kids with healthy crunchy-granola snacks, and then the kid with Nutella and pretzels. 

It’s incredible what an eight-year-old would do for just a bit of Nutella, but there you go. 

Sometimes friendship is just based on wanting someone to share their snacks with you. 

It’s transactional, quantitative, and surface-level. 

The second that kid’s mom stops sending Nutella or chocolate chip cookies, there is no basis to the friendship. 

Your rich friend no longer has a swimming pool, and now people are mysteriously less eager to hang out. 

Maybe now the exam is over, so the person who was so eager to copy your notes a day ago suddenly has no interest in going out for lunch over the weekend. 

Friendships Of Pleasure (“Same Place, Same Time” Energy)

This is your “work bestie” who practically feeds you all the juicy office gossip intravenously. 

It’s that girl who you used to sit next to you in chemistry in sixth grade, who used to play “MASH” with you on the back of your homework. 

These are the friends you meet because your paths cross, and your circumstances are similar. Maybe they will blossom into something more, after you graduate, change jobs, or move away. 

But a lot of times, they simply fade. 

If you’re not at the same workplace, with the same gossip and the same entertaining characters, you are left with nothing to talk about, and the spark that once bonded you together is gone. 

Unlike friendships of utility, you aren’t trying to extract something from the other person. You actually like talking to them and spending time with them. 

It’s just…you won’t be putting in a huge amount of effort to keep the relationship going once you go separate ways. 

Friendships Of Virtue (“Platonic Soulmate” Energy)

These are the lifelong friends founded on character and (you guessed it) virtue. 

When I talk about life-changing friendships, these are the ones I mean. 

They will be invited to your hypothetical future baby’s second birthday. When you’re planning a vacation, you will probably consider visiting their city. They will answer your call at 3am and talk you out of existential dread. If you are going through turmoil, they will be the ones holding the box of tissues.

After months of living your own life, it’s still easy to fall right back into the rhythm of things. Talking to them is never awkward. 

In fact, you want to make the effort to keep your friendship alive. 

…Because your friendship is one of those things keeping you alive.

“When we honestly ask ourselves which person in our lives mean the most, we often find that it is those who, instead of giving advice, solutions, or cures, have chosen rather to share our pain and touch our wounds with a warm and tender hand. The friend who can be silent with us in a moment of despair or confusion, who can stay with us in an hour of grief and bereavement, who can tolerate not knowing, not curing, not healing, and face with us the reality of our powerlessness, that is a friend who cares.”

-Henri Nouwen

#2: I realized that a life resume > a work resume. 

The first time I heard Jesse Itzler’s idea of a “life resume”, my entire paradigm for thinking about goals shifted. 

Rather than goals being a means to making more money, sculpting a hotter body, or “winning” at some flashy professional game, I realized that goals were also tools to flourish at the “life” part. 

This idea of a “life resume” is not about the small habits that accumulate every day, but about the crazy milestones, like hiking the Appalachian trail, or backpacking across Asia, or skydiving, or setting a new world record in eating umeboshi- just for fun!

It’s the things you will probably still be talking about in twenty years, those once-in-a-lifetime adventures that stay with you forever.

“Did she really do that?” future generations will ask.

Yup. With a glimmer in your eye, you certainly did.

Friends give you the energy to tackle a life resume.

Before I met all the friends I have now, there were so many bucket list items that were simply not even on my radar. 

Now, 2 years into my university journey with Minerva, I have managed to hike Mt. Fuji, scuba dive in Okinawa, attend several hackathons, and sample several new hobbies (including swing dancing!). 

None of it is aimed at some professional KPI or some flashy new line on my CV.

It’s about my life resume, and making each passing month and year a story I would be proud to pass on. 

And my friends made it possible. 

#3: I met like-minded and interesting people in college. They made me a better human. 

I accidentally stumbled into an incredible community, and have been reaping the benefits of it since I joined. 

It’s a normal experience for me to feel deep admiration for the things my peers are working on, to ask them how they do it so that I can get better too. 

They are starting companies and non-profits, training competitively at a high level, traveling and adventuring all around the world, making profoundly beautiful art, and all the while, joining me for the occasional 3am ramen. 

Realizing that it was actually possible to find friends that could inspire me so much made me realize the difference friendship makes…even as an introvert, even as a go-getter, even as a nerd.

“The glory of friendship is not the outstretched hand, not the kindly smile, nor the joy of companionship; it is the spiritual inspiration that comes to one when you discover that someone else believes in you and is willing to trust you with a friendship.”

-Ralph Waldo Emerson

Friendship gives you the energy to live more fully. Here’s how to find it.

Finding cool friends is a “chicken or the egg” type problem, because really, when it comes to connection and purpose, we see a reinforcing feedback loop. 

When you spend time doing the things that light you up, you attract those people. 

But when you spend time around the people you admire, you will likely spend your time a little more similarly to them. 

“Are You Really the Average of the 5 People You Spend the Most Time With?”, this Psychology Today article ponders. 

The answer, invariably, is “it’s a little more complicated”. 

However, there is a tried-and-true approach you can steal. “Friends are drawn to your purpose,” Dr. Grumet, author of the article explains. “Not the reason you find it.”

So the answer is simple: if you want to find those amazing friends that inspire you to new heights, start with your purpose. 

Do the cool, weird, strange, exhilarating, scary, fun activities. 

See who shows up to do them with you. 

Be excited to meet new friends when you do them. 

You never know who you’ll end up climbing the next mountain with.  

Thought to Action

1. Map Your Overlaps: List five communities, interests, or identities you partially belong to. Let “partial” be enough.
2. Reach Out Sideways: Send one low-stakes message to someone you admire, not to impress them, just to connect.
3. Practice Being the Initiator: Plan something small (coffee, walk, shared doc, group chat). Belonging often starts with logistics.
4. Notice Where You Already Belong: Write down one place you feel even 10% more like yourself. Spend more time there.
5. Release the Perfect Fit Myth: Remind yourself: belonging is often built, not discovered.

Sources

Grumet, Jordan. “Are You Really the Average of the 5 People You Spend the Most Time With?” Psychology Today, 2025, www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/the-regret-free-life/202508/you-arent-a-product-of-the-5-people-you-spend-time-with. Accessed 6 Mar. 2026.

Maden, Jack. “Aristotle on the 3 Types of Friendship (and How Each Enriches Life) | Philosophy Break.” Philosophybreak.com, July 2023, philosophybreak.com/articles/aristotle-on-the-3-types-of-friendship-and-how-they-enrich-life/.

The post A Lonely Introvert’s Secret To Making Friendship An Energy Source appeared first on Green Also Green.

“To be yourself in a world that is constantly trying to make you something else is the greatest accomplishment.” -Ralph Waldo Emerson

Oh but sweetie, that’s not for people like you…

Let’s start by stating something we all know to be true: everyone has a “vibe”.

The “tech bro” vibe, the “artsy fartsy” vibe, the “dorky” vibe, a “gamer” vibe, a “sporty” vibe, a “boss babe” vibe, and the list goes on. 

We had certain associations as kids maybe. 

Perhaps you were the kid who got straight A’s, and your family pinned onto you their hopes and dreams of raising a future doctor. 

Maybe you were a rebel, and sculpted your identity around denim and black nail polish. 

Were you “not good at math” or “not sciencey”? Did teachers chuckle condescendingly when you announced your dreams to travel the world and backpack across Asia?

Some of us didn’t do intense extracurricular sports as kids, so for the rest of time immemorial, we are simply “not athletic”. A decade later, when you start training for a marathon and taking creatine, the peanut gallery is alive with chatter.

We struggled with a single physics class in college, so gave up on becoming engineers. The whole class was white males with vitamin D deficiency anyway. You have melanin and XX chromosomes. Is it a sign?

Once, when frying an egg, you set the fire alarm off, so you decided “I’m just not a good cook”. Someone ate your innocent first attempts at some “easy, 30-minute” casserole a lady on Instagram made, and everyone thought it was too salty. 

So you put away your apron and never stepped foot in the kitchen again. It’s just not “your thing”.

Don’t change your mind.

But what happens when you decide that despite almost failing Algebra I, you want to build a rocket ship? 

Yes, you burnt that egg once when you were thirteen, but now you want to make a frittata to impress your snobby friend who only cooks recipes from the New York Times.

The “vibe” that once seemed almost predetermined- that seemed so entrenched in how other people saw you that it became you for a bit- becomes a prison. 

But Sofia, you’re a writer!

This is what happened to me. 

I have always been a writer, a crepuscular moody introvert whose creative juices come alive between midnight and 3am. 

Guess which ungainly middle schooler with a skirt down to her ankles once made her short stories about murder, betrayal, and “no-one-understands-me”-ness?

Yeah, it was probably (always) me. 

Ever since I was little, this was simply how I made sense of the world. 

It was not through human conversation, but through effusive journal entries, a pile of unfinished drafts in my Google Drive, and reading books way past my bedtime.

So naturally, the societal algorithm destined me toward either law, journalism, or eclectic writerly isolation. 

As such, my loved ones were perplexed when I started talking about nanotechnology, coral reefs, seagrass, and mycelium bricks. 

It didn’t fit my “vibe”. 

I was an error message everyone rushed to debug. 

“If a man does not keep pace with his companions, perhaps it is because he hears a different drummer. Let him step to the music which he hears, however measured or far away.” -Henry David Thoreau

In Denial

How does one reckon with being naturally interested in all the wrong, mismatched things?

Well, usually it’s through denial. 

So I swung around, leaning into different molds I thought would satisfy my curiosity and leverage my skills, feeling more and more like I didn’t quite belong anywhere. 

In fact, it took years until I finally found the right balance between my interests, and became comfortable with resisting the prison of other people’s assumptions of what you “should” be. 

Now, I have no problem with being both the scientist and the artist, with being a Renaissance woman, with being at the intersections, with defining my career from the ground up. 

What I Learned From Having Mixed Vibes

#1: There are ways to say “I don’t know” without sounding like a loser. 

When I was in high school, at that stress-induced time when everyone was applying for university and announcing their ambitions to proud (or disappointed) audiences, I felt utterly stuck. 

When everyone around me seemed to have a simple, digestible 5-year plan for their life, I was caught in a web of indecision, overwhelmed by the fact that I simply had no idea what to do and where to go. 

There was this rush to get to that enlightened point of certainty, to have an answer people would be impressed with. 

Fast forward several years later, when all those same people with shiny aspirations have now changed their major seven times, paused their degree for a gap year, or doubted and questioned themselves many a late night.

Now, there is something I know with certainty: none of us really knew. 

We wanted so desperately to have a plan. Our parents wanted us to have a plan. So they told us to study something “safe” like medicine or engineering. 

The lady from down the street asked about the plan too, and told us we should really consider studying AI because it’s all the rage.

Our teachers advised a plan (“Oh Sally, you would be a wonderful candidate for studying French. You would absolutely love it!”). 

But that doesn’t change the fact that you still don’t know. 

Now I’m halfway through college, and while I know more, and have significantly more clarity about my future than I did then, there are still lots of questions. 

What’s the difference?

Now I know how to say “I don’t know” with confidence and authority. 

I say “I don’t know, but this is what I’m thinking…” or “I don’t know, and this is what I’m doing to get closer to an answer.” 

#2: You don’t need labels. You need data.  

Let’s talk about how we’re all lazy but desperate and insecure egomaniacs. 

I mean, let’s be honest, it’s kind of fun to go home for holidays and to nonchalantly throw around phrases that make it sound like you have your life together. 

It’s reassuring to talk about your super-committed, always-romantic “green-flag” boyfriend who makes six figures and volunteers at the animal shelter every weekend. 

We would love to talk about how we landed that coveted Google internship, and like Elle Woods, act like it was no big deal (What, like it’s hard?). 

On the other hand, it can feel discouraging to be the single, not-yet-sure, maybe-maybe-not one with horror stories in place of victories. 

But actually, taking your time can be an incredible strength, and land you in a way more aligned decision in the long-run. 

When I took a gap year, it was easy to feel behind as my friends raced ahead and settled into college. Meanwhile, I took the year to try out different passion projects, jobs, internships, courses, and athletic challenges. 

It was the pause before the next chapter of my life, and it made all the difference. 

Having the space to fail, to test, to messily realize both what I didn’t know that I thought I knew, and what I knew that I thought was a mystery, gave me the confidence to use my time in college to get even more narrow. 

I learned to not simply ask what I would like to do, but to instead consider what I’m already building/learning/exploring, and why it works or doesn’t. 

Then, with that information, I find new ideas to test, curating these options based on my interests and skills already.

#3: Your dreams set the scale. 

I used to think mood boards and “manifestations” were a bunch of fluffy nonsense…until I tried them.

Giving myself permission to imagine my dream life, dream career, dream love, dream home, and more, made me realize that none of it was actually out of reach. 

This changed my mindset about success completely. 

I realized that half of “succeeding” is giving yourself permission to pursue. 

It’s about giving yourself permission to go for it, even if the “thing” you’re going for is wildly ambitious. Often, we shut ourselves down before even considering the logistics.

The answer is simple: allow yourself to imagine that “impossible” life, the one you stopped believing in because someone told you it wasn’t “realistic”. Don’t stop yourself when the “what if…” thoughts roll in. 

“I realized that half of ‘succeeding’ is giving yourself permission to pursue.”

It might be geographical: “What if I lived on the beach and had seventeen dogs?”

It might be entrepreneurial: “What if I owned a coffee shop that was also a pottery studio?”

Maybe it’s about a creative project or an educational pursuit: “What if I directed a short film and went back to school to study medieval poetry?”

 Let yourself dream again, and let those dreams exist in your mind long enough for you to actually treat them seriously. 

#4: Most decisions aren’t binary.

You contain multidudes.

So I’ll be the first to assure you it’s not a problem to be fixed, but rather a strength to be nurtured. 

Sometimes you think you have to choose between two sides of yourself, and you actually don’t.

I thought I had to choose between a “sciencey” path and an “artsy and humanities path”, and I found I could have both in my life, at just the level I wanted them. 

I realized it’s not a choice between being either a starving artist or a creatively-repressed robot who never produces or creates anything. 

There’s a gradient. 

You can also be: an artist with a day job, an artist who also does freelance work, a hobbyist, someone who starts out with a day job and transitions to being an artist full time. 

Personally, I’ve made the decision that I don’t want my art to be my main income source. I simply don’t want financial pressure on my creativity. 

That said, I still take my creative pursuits seriously even if it’s not how I plan to make money.

In reality, when it comes to career paths, it’s usually not a choice between “do” or “don’t” but more so a question of “how” and “to what extent”.

“When it comes to career paths, it’s usually not a choice between “do” or “don’t” but more so a question of “how” and “to what extent”.”

#5: Your education is only as good as how you keep learning. 

Going to college for me is about learning how to self-educate once I’m done. 

It’s about learning how to think, conversate, read, how to study and pursue opportunities.

College teaches me how to engage with peers and people who are experts in their field, and about what I want to learn more about and to what extent.

We live in a world that places a huge emphasis on pieces of paper that say what you did, when, and with what institution. 

But once you have those pieces of paper, what really gets you across the line is those skills you actually acquired. 

So yes, degrees are useful tools, but what affects you most over the course of your life is how you independently develop knowledge and wisdom. 

I Gave Up The Search.

The biggest misconception I had about building a career that blends, and diverges, and takes its own unique shape, is that I had to “find” it. 

The truth ended up being that a career isn’t something you find; it’s something you build. 

How do you build it?

With the small decisions to pursue a project or not, to apply for a certain role or not, to reach out to a person in a certain field or not. 

It’s about finally giving yourself permission to define what a dream job can be, and then being bold enough to make it a reality.

“If God had wanted me otherwise, He would have created me otherwise.” -Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Thought to Action

1. Treat Your Life Like a Lab: Reframe one uncertainty as an experiment instead of a decision.
2. Shorten the Feedback Loop: Ask: how can I learn something in a week instead of a year?
3. Document What You Learn: Keep a simple log: what I tried, what happened, what surprised me.
4. Detach Outcome From Worth: Let experiments succeed or fail without meaning anything about you.
5. Practice Staying in Motion: When something doesn’t work, don’t restart. Adjust and continue.

Sources

No external sources were used for this post. 

The post When Your Vibe Gets In The Way Of Your Heart appeared first on Green Also Green.

“The real voyage of discovery consists not in seeking new landscapes, but in having new eyes.”— Marcel Proust, French novelist, literary critic, and essayist

Back when I played just to play… 

When I was a little girl, there was a random assortment of hobbies I pursued when I played (and how foreign the concept of “play” becomes when you’re taught about “productivity”). 

I used to orchestrate grandiose story lines for my Barbies to act out. I would imagine entire worlds and characters for each. 

When my cousins came over, we would spend part of the time scheming about how we would convince our parents to let us sleep over, and another part putting on plays.

I had a little garden, just my own, with basil, mint, lavender and a blueberry bush. It was in a big wooden container with wheels and brakes, and I could push it around- in the shade or in direct sunlight, all at my own discretion.

With all my heart, I loved my little garden tenderly. In fact, I felt genuinely heartbroken when my basil would grow long and woody, or when my mint would turn brown. 

What play looked like as I got older.

As I got older, the stories I would write got more elaborate, and my experiments with the plants got more…interesting. 

One time I sprouted a bunch of pepper seeds in my room, growing at least a dozen little pepper plants in my room in discarded pots of yogurt. For one of my birthdays I got a hydroponics kit, and eventually convinced my parents to help me build a hydroponic system from scratch. 

You would think, from the outside, that maybe one should take these kinds of interests into consideration. Maybe these are those “signs” people always talk about. 

I mean, who is digging around in the trash for pepper seeds and yogurt containers, aspiring to turn her room into a jungle?

But for whatever reason, I ignored these quirks. 

I felt like I didn’t know enough yet to “settle” on what I naturally loved to do. 

…and yes, there was also a fair dose of peer pressure and feeling the need to prove myself.

How I translate play from childhood to adulthood.

Now I’m 2 months away from turning 21, and I can confirm a few things.

One: I’m still a writer, and am finally learning how to take that side of myself seriously.

Two: I still love plants, and soil, and dirt, and asking questions about the natural world. 

Three: By insisting on properly testing out different interests, I have found ways of applying those things I’ve always loved in a way that feels way aligned with the adult I’m becoming rather than the child I used to be.

Allow me to explain. 

The Balance: You know what you know, but you don’t know what you don’t know. 

Maybe, like me, after some introspection, you know what are the constant threads that have carried on from childhood into adulthood- those things that people might look at you with a sigh, and say, “yep, you haven’t changed one bit.”

Pay attention to those things. 

Lean into them. 

And then here’s what you do: explore. 

You explore not to dismiss your interests (which was my initial reason for exploring), but to refine them and incorporate them even more deeply. 

Finding every way I didn’t want to write.

For example, writing.

I love it, but there’s so many ways to apply it. So I tested it out.

I “combined” science and writing by trying science communication for a bit- contributing to science blogs and steering myself toward nonfiction. 

It didn’t hit the same as writing weird emo short stories at 3am.

Then I tried ditching that completely. 

Nope. 

So I’m back to writing weird emo short stories at 3am.

Exploring the natural world beyond hydroponics and pepper plants.

On the plants side, I tried marine biology, and it felt close, but not exactly right.

I tried materials science out by volunteering in a lab at Berkeley, and over my gap year I learned some AutoCAD.

Not quite there, but also some part of it felt good.

Back to earth sciences. 

Now we’re exploring geochemistry. 

So far, that feels good…

The Squiggly Process Of Exploration Through Play

The point is to identify what fits and what doesn’t, and each new experiment you do to test yourself is new information.

You are just growing a bigger and bigger body of evidence to use when you make decisions about how you spend each day.

The process is 100% a messy nonlinear squiggle that will confuse and overwhelm you.

Make no mistake.

But it’s also incredibly rewarding when you find key components to feeling like you are really pursuing something you care about, are good at, and that sustains your livelihood.

I know it’s hard because I’ve lived the squiggle. 

My life has been a squiggle for years.

So I wanted to share some musings that I’ve gained so far. Maybe they will help you find a little piece of yourself along the way.

#1: Tiny experiments. 

Am I the only person who hates that phrase “I just knew”?

Maybe it’s that I have never “just known” anything, or that when I “know”, it’s not a “just knowing” it, but rather a “knowing, but…”

For me, knowing is laced with doubt, and I find myself going back and forth in a game of existential table tennis all the time. 

“I know I like X, but what if once I experience Y, I like it better?”

The eternal struggle of a chronic overthinker. 

Instead of the impossible advice to “trust my gut”, I create a portfolio of irrefutable evidence. 

I test the possibilities in small ways and scale commitment to that option accordingly. 

Then, my decisions don’t dwell in the realm of hypothetically what I would prefer to do, or what I would prefer to spend my time on. 

It’s actually based on the actions I have already taken. 

Before you commit to spending your life in a particular field, ask yourself, “Do I even like to learn about this?” Would you enjoy listening to even a single podcast on it? Do you want to get better at the skills involved?

Then, would you independently pursue experience by starting a passion project there or pursuing an internship in this field? 

(If the answer is probably no, but you still find it interesting to learn about passively, you’ve got yourself a new hobby!)

Scale your commitment alongside the evidence that what you’ve chosen actually fits. 

See it as many tiny experiments, not a decision you make overnight. 

#2: Learn to play again. 

I have an embarrassing secret: I forgot how to have fun. 

Somewhere along the way, everything I did in my free time had to be “justified”, connected with this singular thread of profound purpose. 

It doesn’t have to be that way, though. 

No…really. Listen to me. It doesn’t have to be that way. 

You can actually just play to play, laugh to laugh, and enjoy for enjoyment’s sake. 

So whatever it means for you, go out there and play. 

Does it mean taking yourself out for ice cream and choosing horrendous flavors you only enjoy in secret? Maybe it means learning how to roller skate and falling on your face?

No, don’t look up “cardiovascular benefits to…” or “how to start an etsy shop selling…” before you decide. 

Make fun a good enough reason.

This is how I learned my own passions as a child, not by thinking about productivity, but by thinking about what actually felt good to do.

Play is natural. 

That’s why kids are so good at it.

It’s growing up when we unlearn it, and in the name of being “practical” we actually end up sacrificing all the things that bring us the most joy.

Let yourself go back to the basics. 

Play is where we meet the rawest version of ourselves, and only in knowing the rawest version of yourself can you make those more “serious”, “adult” decisions about how to spend your life.

Ah, the beauty of paradox.

#3: Finish what you start. 

I’m a strong advocate for quitting, with one important caveat. 

Only quit after you’ve given that book/person/sport/ice cream flavor/music genre/game a fair shot. 

Try learning how to code before deciding with certainty that software engineering isn’t for you. 

Travel to new places before deciding you never want to live outside your home town. 

Read at least the first 10 pages before deciding to put down the book. 

When we decide to give up, we often do it when we face friction. 

It’s when the romance of a new pursuit wears off and we actually have to work, that we decide with dramatic exhaustion that we’ve had enough. 

The climb is too steep. 

Our legs are too tired. 

The task is just too hard. 

Instead, know you can do it regardless of the friction, and finish what you started. 

Then decide, once you have conquered the mountain, finished the race, read the first few pages, or listened to the first 30 seconds of the new song. 

Do the thing you thought you couldn’t do.

Only then will you have enough information to truly know whether you’re quitting because you felt overwhelmed in the moment, or something actually doesn’t resonate. 

Discouragement because it’s hard right now does not equal misalignment forever. 

#4: Listen to your jealousy.

Let’s not pretend you haven’t felt it too- the sting of a fake smile when you’re trying (and shouldn’t we get credit for trying?) so hard – soooo hard- to be happy for someone else when you feel like a complete loser.

No really, how can you not feel jealous? 

When you feel more single than the number 1, and you’re so poor you have -$7 in your checking account, what are you supposed to feel about yourself when others succeed?

Good?!

Please.

It sucks to be left behind, and when we are all on different timelines, there always manages to be someone ahead of you in some way.

Either it’s that you’re single and they just met the love of their life. 

Or it’s that you just got fired but they got into grad school.

They got a promotion and you got fined $500 when you can barely afford groceries. 

It’s a normal feeling, yet we all try to swallow it shamefully. 

But jealousy is also information, and it’s very important information.

We get jealous because other people have something we want, something we don’t feel we have already.

So you need to listen to it.

What is your jealousy telling you? How does your life need to change so that you can feel happy for others instead of annoyed?

Once you know what you want, you can actually work towards it.

So start listening. 

#5: Have the courage to admit you don’t know.

There is a quote attributed to Peter Seeger, the American singer, songwriter, musician, and social activist known for singing “Goodnight, Irene”.

It goes, “The first step in solving a problem is admitting there is a problem to be solved.”

In a similar vein, the first step to finding that perfect intersection of skill, salary, and societal need we call ‘ikigai’ is to acknowledge that you haven’t found it yet. 

There is so much pressure to know, to have a plan, and to carve out certainty in a world that thoroughly denies it. 

However, when you say you don’t know, you get bombarded with unsolicited advice, pity, and disappointed frowns. 

Now let’s be honest, there is no way to avoid the way people respond to your (totally justified) lack of certainty. 

Maybe you cannot control it if part of being an interdisciplinary iconoclast is letting people down in the moment. 

That’s why it takes courage to admit what you don’t know.

It takes courage to bravely test the uncharted waters that might just be exactly right for you. 

Yes, you will have to stray from everyone else and face the doubts head on. 

It will feel lonely sometimes.

But don’t let that dissuade you! 

Once you find that uncharted territory where being your exact flavor of weird makes perfect sense, saying “I don’t know” will not be shameful, but liberating. 

It will be your license to explore, your passport to designing your life with ruthless precision. 

Pay attention to what you pay attention to.

It’s so easy to dismiss the things we naturally lean towards. 

I used to think everyone could nerd out over a monthly issue of National Geographic. Obviously, all my friends would find that one Scientific American article fascinating. And of course they would rather get lost hiking on an active volcano than sit in a dark room watching cat videos. 

(On that note, please see this Scientific American article about a team of scientists who invented a smart underwear that can count how many times the average person farts per day.)

However, realizing I had unique interests that weren’t shared universally ended up being one of the most liberating epiphanies of my life. 

After zooming in on the things I wanted to learn about already, and the skills I wanted to get good at, I found that I could make a living out of all the activities I already saw as “play”.

In the end, we don’t have to torture ourselves, squeeze ourselves into a mold that someone else came up with and presented to us in a PowerPoint in high school. 

It’s actually not as simple as “doctor, engineer, lawyer… and everything else”. 

In fact, it’s not even as simple as choosing only one thing. 

Your life is a canvas that you get to fill with exactly the colors and shades and brush strokes that perfectly suit you. 

The only question that remains is whether you’re going to be holding the brush, or whether you will hand it to someone else. 

Thought to Action

1. Track Energy, Not Interests: For one week, note what gives you energy and what drains it. Patterns reveal more than labels.
2. Run a Passion Experiment: Choose one small action that tests a curiosity (not a career decision). Give it a deadline.
3. Separate Skill From Identity: You don’t need to be “good” at something for it to matter to you.
4. Design a Tiny Version of the Dream: Ask: what would the smallest, cheapest version of this life look like right now?
5. Let Passion Be Built: Treat interest as something you cultivate, not something you wait to discover.

Sources

No external sources were used for this post.

The post 5 Easy Ways To Turn Play Into Your Dream Career appeared first on Green Also Green.

“Simplicity carried to an extreme becomes elegance.” -Jon Franklin, American author and Pulitzer Prize winner

Design is small tweaks over a long time.

For several months, I have been staring at my laptop screen, knowing I had to talk about evolutionary biology and design, but not knowing exactly what shape to make the words and what angle to enter into the topic. 

I first got the inspiration to write about it when completing an assignment for an evolutionary biology class. As part of this project, I had to conduct a phylogenetic analysis, using software to construct a sort of “family tree” of related species, called a phylogeny. 

Through it, we could see how species have evolved, where they branched in the evolutionary tree, and when certain traits adaptively radiated. 

It was fascinating, with lots of crossover to how ideas evolve, or how etymology shapes, or even how culture spreads across geography. 

But nowadays, we seldom make the link between biology and other domains. 

So I thought about this. For months. 

Then, as I munched on a bag of highly addictive caramel popcorn, it hit me: design is not about the idea coming to you all at once. 

It’s about riffing, iterating, and building something better than what you had before. 

And guess what?

That’s also exactly how design works in biology. 

Much like in evolution, it’s not about starting out perfect. It’s about making many small tweaks over a long period of time until you arrive at an end product you’re proud of. 

#1: The Underrated Power Of a Terrible First Draft

The idea of being struck by a bolt of lightning and suddenly having a stroke of creative genius is a widespread myth that afflicts millions of perfectionists and overthinkers worldwide each day. 

We are tormented by the fact that we will somehow blasphemize the idea in our head by putting it out into the world, and realizing it isn’t that great in real life. 

It’s the fear that we will turn potential into actuality, and in doing so, be confronted with so many mistakes and imperfections.

 And these mistakes? 

They will have the final say over what we are capable of on a deeper level. 

The sappy poem you wrote about your crush in seventh grade? Definitely nowhere near Jane Austen or Maya Angelou level. So your literary career is over. 

The lumpy scarf you knit three Thanksgivings ago, where you messed up the pattern and ran out of yarn? Yeah, you better give up knitting now. 

If you make that “cringe” post about that incredible passion project you’ve been working on, your cousin’s friend’s sister will not be impressed. 

And who are we if our cousin’s friend’s sister doesn’t approve of us?!

Maybe no one will care. They might think you’re being “performative”. 

Evolution doesn’t work this way. 

It throws out so many terrible first drafts it would make you dizzy. It leaves so many of its genetic “ideas” behind.

And yet?

And yet. 

Look around you. 

There is life everywhere, in the most impossible niches (check out this magnetic bacteria I heard about recently). This life is designed impeccably. Why? Because of those terrible drafts that paved the way. 

#2: Random Mutations 

The irony is that as much as we are creatures of habit, we are also built on randomness. 

While a lot of the traits we have as humans seem to make sense, they are also the product of random differences in our genetics being passed on because they help people survive and perpetuate the human race. 

But random mutations aren’t just biological. 

They also apply to the design process, where we not only ideate, but also iterate and test. 

For example, if you’re inventing a new pasta recipe, you might add some of the more “classic” ingredients (marinara sauce, cheese, basil…). 

Then, you separate the pasta, and decide to test out some ingredients you have never added before. For one bowl of pasta, you throw in some edamame beans. In the other, you add some chopped spinach. The last bowl gets some broccoli. 

You have tried something completely random that in all likelihood will end up tasting either neutral (i.e. you don’t mind whether it’s there or not) or worse (i.e. you will never add it to your pasta again).

However, if you do this enough times, you will also get the third outcome: realizing that your random new ingredient makes this dish taste better. 

After trying potatoes and corn on pizza (I condone it!), a flavor unique to audacious Japan, I have come to realize this is a tried and true approach to generating masterpieces. 

Creative genius isn’t about just knowing to put potatoes and corn on your pizza. 

It’s about having the courage to try pizza with a bunch of other weird toppings, knowing eventually, you will stumble across a great combination. 

#3: Steady Rivers Cut Through Immovable Mountains.

This is the age of doing everything all at once.

You must cram every big life milestone into a 5-year plan. Log it in your bullet journal. Post about it with a “candid” (but also totally staged) photo with a caption that reads “#blessed”.

We are in the “instant coffee”, “instant results”, and “instant progress”  world. 

Evolution doesn’t work that way. 

Instead, evolution makes the smallest changes you could imagine, but compounds them over millions, and even billions, of years. 

This act of compounding and iterating on tiny mutations is what has produced some of the best designs we know to occur within life. 

Consider the eye, which first evolved only as a light-sensing organ, and later developed the lens, retina, iris, and more. 

Across the animal kingdom, eyes take all sorts of weird and wonderful appearances. 

One of the common traits among all of them, however, is that they sense light, and have been knee-deep in the evolutionary design process for millions of years. 

So take it slow.

Small consistent changes will get you way farther that sporadic drastic steps.

#4: It’s not the strongest or smartest, but the most adaptable…

There is a beautiful quote attributed to Albert Einstein that goes, “The measure of intelligence is the ability to change.” 

Isn’t that such a relief?

Maybe in second grade you did not always ace your spelling tests, and in third grade you weren’t the first to learn your times tables. 

In fact, maybe right now, you feel like kind of an idiot because you cracked an egg in a way that made the yolk break. You turned all your white clothes pink because one red sock snuck into the washing machine. Maybe you accidentally clicked “send” on an email before actually adding the attachment. 

If you have ever felt stupid, or weak, or incapable, or unworthy of success, there is good news: you don’t have to be perfect; you just have to be adaptable. 

When climate change strikes, or human beings destroy yet another vital habitat, the way species perpetuate is by adapting to change. 

If there is an extinction, they fill the empty niche. 

New mutations occur, and the old species adapt to the new habitat, food sources, and conditions. 

Evolutionary biology says that when Life (yes, with a capital ‘L’) happens, you adapt. 

Design should adapt the same way too.

Design is dynamic. 

The unifying theme connecting evolutionary biology with design thinking is that, contrary to what we might think about both domains, they are dynamic and evolving.

Both design and evolution are about responding to change and to need. 

Design is the space between stimulus and response where we decide what the next iteration will look like. 

It means saying “this next draft won’t be perfect, but it’ll be closer than what came before”. 

Thought to Action

1. Lower the Stakes on One Creative Act: Make something deliberately small, unfinished, or silly. Let it exist without optimizing it.
2. Feed Your Imagination Intentionally: Consume one strange or delightful input today—a poem, a walk, a conversation, a Wikipedia rabbit hole.
3. Create Without Explaining: Make something you won’t post, monetize, or justify. Let curiosity be the reason.
4. Keep an “Idea Garden”: Write down half-formed ideas without judging them. Growth likes space.
5. Practice Creative Permission: Before starting, say: “I’m allowed to explore this.” Then begin.

Sources

No external sources were used for this post. 

The post The 4 Design Secrets From Evolutionary Biology That Unlock Results appeared first on Green Also Green.

“Sooner or later, those who win are those who think they can.” ­— Paul Tournier

Growing up never ends.

There is nothing like the disgusting and raw feeling of emotional and spiritual growing pains to reshape the way confidence looks for you. 

For my younger self, confidence used to mean looking and behaving with power. 

It was Beyoncé-superbowl-halftime-showing your whole life, every single day. Confidence was a sick leather jacket and red lipstick that could slice through steel. 

It was denim, or ripped denim better yet. 

Confidence used to mean being loud, fiery, and unstoppable.

Then, I had what I will lovingly refer to as “character-building experiences”, which are, of course, the parts of growing up that we all wish we could fast-forward through. 

It’s the friendship breakups, the romantic breakups, the moving-aways, the not getting to say goodbye to your favorite family pet, the getting rejected from cool opportunities and being jealous of your friends, hating that you’re jealous of your friends, feeling like no one else is getting rejected like you’re getting rejected, the constant FOMO because you haven’t done X thing yet. 

Life happened, I guess, and every time “life happened”, my idea of what confidence actually was shifted.

Confidence As A System For Building A Life Others Haven’t Seen Yet.

In theory, we all want to lead big lives and do amazing things. 

The trouble is, you often can’t get there by doing exactly the same thing as everyone else. Duh, you’re thinking. 

The thing is, doing something different is actually really really hard. 

That’s why now, I think of confidence not as an unchanging emotional state, but as a series of systems you put into your life to mitigate those emotions and increase your chances of success. 

What does that mean?

It means you can be confident, and still heartbroken. 

You can be confident and still afraid. 

You can be confident, and still feel overwhelmed. 

And here’s a crazy one- you can be confident and still shy. 

Ultimately, confidence is about how you move through those emotions, and what your response looks like. 

Steal this confidence hack. 

My most recent “character-building” experience was a few months ago, and involved a lot of crying and angry ranting. 

It is then that I developed a beautiful new hack to build back my confidence and get me through the subsequent months of healing: sending my future self pep talk emails.

Um…what??

Okay, I know it sounds weird. I won’t sit here and tell you that it isn’t. 

But weird works. 

When I send my future self emails, it has two effects. 

Firstly, it’s forcing me to imagine myself in the future and think about where I want to be then (emotionally, professionally, academically, etc.). Simply realizing there will be a time when my current challenges are removed already helps me feel like the world isn’t ending. 

Secondly, receiving emails from my past self- whether it was a month ago, a week ago, or a day ago- highlights to me how much progress I have actually made.

A lot of times, it’s easy to overlook this because we are caught up in what we need to do now, and on how big the gap is between our current and desired states. 

Nevertheless, it’s still valuable to remember that you’re probably currently in the desired state of some past version of yourself. 

Celebrating that can give you the energy to give your future self the same gift. 

How It Works

#1: Write the email using the following template:

To: [insert here either the same email you’re sending it from, or another email address that goes to you. I send these emails from my personal email to my school email.]

Subject: [It can be whatever you want. Subject lines like “Letter From You 10 Days Ago” or “Keep up the great work! I’m proud of you.” all work.

Message:

Dear [insert here your name] from [insert here the date your future self will receive the message],

[Insert here the body of the message. Make it 5-7 sentences long ideally, and write something you know your future self will need to hear. For example, at the end of a busy semester, I told my future self (now past self) that she was doing great, and I was proud of her.]

Love,

You from [Insert here the date you sent the message.]

#2: Right next to the send button, press the arrow that allows you to do a scheduled send. Click it, and click the date you want your future self to receive the email. 

#3: Now forget about it. Later on, when you see the message in your inbox, you will have a nice time hearing from yourself. I know it sounds silly, but it works.

Confidence is a system, not an emotional state. (But it’s a system which will create an emotional state!)

One of the beautiful things that happen when you finally let go of this idea that confidence is about always feeling a certain way is that you turn your focus onto habits that naturally create those feelings as a byproduct. 

Sending myself emails is by no means the only habit I incorporate into my life to feel better when things are hard.

Nor does it make the sadness, heartbreak, or sense of overwhelm magically disappear. 

Here’s what it does accomplish: hope. 

And sometimes, a little nudge of hope from your past self is all you need to invest in those tiny decisions that cumulatively get you out of a rut. 

Thought to Action

1. Pause and Write Your “Failure Archive”: List three things you tried that didn’t go as planned this year. Don’t fix them. Instead, just name them and how they made you feel.
2. Reframe Effort as Evidence: Track one kind of effort for two weeks (reading time, daily creative minutes, meaningful talks). Let the action be the metric, not just the outcome.
3. Create a “Growth Pause”: Pick one thing you’ll do less of (doomscrolling, chores as avoidance). Put a boundary around it and note what space that creates for something nourishing. 
4. Rediscover Joy in the Small and Slow: Read one short piece of writing without pressure—no speed goals, no expectations.
5. Set One “Next Try Intent”: Choose one thing from your failure archive and decide a small, doable step you’ll try next quarter — no perfection, just continuation.

Sources

No external sources were used for this post.

The post Sending Myself Emails Is The Embarrassing Life Hack I Didn’t Know Would 10x My Confidence. appeared first on Green Also Green.

“I am not a little bit of many things; but I am the sufficient representation of many things. I am not an incompletion of all these races; but I am a masterpiece of the prolific. I am an entirety, I am not a lack of anything; rather I am a whole of many things. God did not see it needful to make me generic. He thinks I am better than that.” – C. JoyBell C.

Where do you belong?

We are always trying to decide where we and others belong. 

As humans, we are wired to put each other in boxes. Even if they don’t fit, even if they’re simplistic. Even if the box is actually a really complicated place whose “hereness” and “thereness” is not even clearly definable. 

But even on top of putting other people in boxes, we are often driven by a need to categorize ourselves.

Why?

Because in categorizing ourselves, we find where we truly belong. 

Exclusion hurts, so we’re hungry to belong. 

If you think I’m making this up, check out the work Dr. Matthew Lieberman has done with brain imaging, corroborating what most of us already know to be true: being left out hurts. 

In fact, these findings even suggest that social rejection activates the same neural pathways as physical pain.

Ouch. 

When you don’t belong anywhere. 

So what am I getting at?

It was always a question for me- “where do I belong?”

Born American, I grew up in a Hispanic household with Cuban-born grandparents and American-born parents who raised me up on a steady diet of fluent Spanglish. 

In elementary school, after completing my homework, I would plop myself criss-cross-applesauce on the floor of my great grandmother’s room. There, I’d watch telenovela after telenovela. It’s how I learned to speak Spanish. 

I didn’t know how to say “laundry” until I was at least ten (I would just call it ropa sucia).

But then I would go to school (the site of many acute traumas, sadly). There, the extent of my Hispanic-ness was called into question. I simply wasn’t “Hispanic” enough to be considered “the real thing”.

Well, but I wasn’t not Hispanic either. 

I was American, and I was Hispanic…right?

Enter: England. 

As if it wasn’t complicated enough, at 13 I got what felt like devastating news for any Miami girl. We were moving to England. 

It felt like the world was ending. 

England?! 

Of all the places, why did I have to go live in the cloudiest, rainiest, grayest, windiest country imaginable? And what would happen to my teeth???

(What would happen is my dentist was horrified. Too much tea turned my teeth yellow for a bit.)

I had a hard time with vitamin D for the following years, but turns out, the weather was the least of it. 

I discovered that outside the US, being American is not seen with such star-spangled admiration, so I carried around this part of myself like a big ugly birthmark I couldn’t get rid of. 

The British Girl. 

But a strange thing happened. 

When I was in the UK, everyone outside my family saw me as the American girl. Then, when I came back to Miami for the summers, everyone saw me as British. 

I was often defined by where I had been rather than who I was. Still, I wondered where I truly belonged.

Was I just a human cut into thirds- one third Hispanic, one third American, one third British? 

Or was it more complicated?

The Watered Down Identity 

Now I’m 5 months away from turning 21, and I have lived in 3 different countries and 5 different cities.

Sometimes I wonder if that means my identity becomes that much more watered down. I wonder why it bothers me when others don’t mind the same thing. 

To me, it boils down to belonging. It’s cool to have kinship with strangers, to know that you are united by language and history even without knowing each other personally. It’s fun to talk to someone and realize “oh, so your family does it the same way too!”. 

When you live at the intersections of cultures, it’s hard to find that, because you’re not 100% “in” any group. 

Instead, it’s like you’re just half-dipped in several cultures. 

The Gift Of Being Your Own Category 

So being a cultural hybrid-halfling is definitely isolating at times, and can feel like a life-sentence of failed connection. 

However, there is another side to the story. 

I think of it like the origin story of a superhero- someone different from everyone else, who dreams to conform but steps into their power by finally embracing their uniqueness. 

#1: You’re the ambassador.  

When you exist between cultures, you’re something of a myth-buster. 

An American who travels? An introverted Latina? A British student with good teeth?

You get to challenge stereotypes, and represent a nuance that changes the way other people engage with your culture. 

Sometimes, it means defending where you come from, and sometimes it means apologizing for the atrocities of your country’s history. 

Whatever it is, the control is in how you respond. 

#2: You don’t take beliefs and customs for granted. You think seriously about what to embody, and what to leave behind.

When you have been immersed in British culture as well as Miami culture, you have a large array of choices to make. 

In lots of ways, these are two opposite ends of the cultural landscape, so it can feel like a shock to go from one to the other. 

However, in knowing both worlds, you get to choose for yourself.

Personally, I have tried to let go of the superficial attitudes of Miami, as well as its terrible conception of punctuality (expect everyone to run 15 minutes late always). 

That said, I really admire how people in Miami have such passion for life. It’s a city full of art, music, food, and overall adventure. I want to live a life rich with all those things!

Similarly, I try to let go of the British tendency to diminish and brush under the rug. British culture is frustratingly indirect, asking questions which should be statements and leaving those who don’t know the “code” to guess what they mean. 

However, I hold deep respect for British pragmatism, and the keen focus on what is “sensible”, which includes the (what I, as a Miamian, would consider) crazy proactiveness to plan holidays over a year in advance. 

#3: You know how to adapt.

When your life consists of regularly shifting among geography and culture, you start to become really good at building back your community, support network, and sense of belonging. 

You become proficient at picking up bits and pieces of new languages. 

You learn how to recover from the inevitable faux pas with grace. 

It’s no longer awkward to make new friends or scary to go on public transportation alone. Now, you are an antifragile cultural explorer who is unfazed by clicking “reset” time and time again. 

The amazing part is how this then translates to other parts of your life. 

You start to see microcosms of nuance in other people, and learn how to walk the line between warmth and assertiveness regardless of the professional, personal, or geographical context. 

Most noticeable is the confidence you develop knowing that no matter where you are, whether there is signal, whether you speak the language or not, you will be able to fend for yourself. 

Moreover, you can find stability in knowing yourself, and isn’t that the greatest treasure of all?  

You get to decide where you belong. 

The reward of wrestling with my sense of belonging all my life has been to finally see that belonging is an artificial construct. 

When the lines between “us” and “them” are clear, we let other people decide where we belong, which is comforting, but not empowering. 

Having other people deny my sense of belonging has challenged this natural tendency to let the world decide which box I fit in. 

But being denied belonging also taught me to fight for it. 

It has taught me that when people say, “Your Spanish is not good enough for you to be a ‘real’ Latina”, I am allowed to not believe them. 

(And let’s face it- most South American Latinos don’t know a single word of the hundreds of endangered indigenous languages that existed on the continent before Spanish ever did). 

Ultimately, it is up to you to determine your cultural belonging, and to explore your history with openness and curiosity like the microcosm of nuance you are. 

In doing so, you will not only unlock resilience, you will also unlock peace.  

Thought To Action 

1. Draw Your Connection Map: Write down five people or communities—old friends, classmates, mentors—you’d like to reconnect with or better understand. Choose one and take a small step (message, coffee invite, honest hello).
2. Practice a Micro Habit: Pick something meaningful you stopped doing (writing, hiking, reading quietly). Commit to just five minutes a day — it’s the momentum that matters.
3. Turn Discomfort Into Question Curiosity: Instead of “Why did I fail?”, ask “What did this effort teach me about what matters?”.
4. Document Your Slow Wins: Keep a tiny journal of weekly wins — not outcomes, but efforts that felt worth doing (like choosing mindful reading over passive scrolling). Let this remind you how small actions accumulate meaning.
5. End With Gratitude + Intention: Close your reflection session with gratitude for the effort you showed, then set a gentle intention for the coming week.

Sources 

No external sources were used for this post.

The post What To Do When You Don’t Belong Anywhere appeared first on Green Also Green.

“Leaders bleed, period.” ― Silvia Young, My FemTruth: Scandalous Survival Stories

The Productivity Fraternity.

There are certain arbitrary signifiers that long ago, some random Kappa Kappa Productivity Fraternity decided to put on an equally arbitrary checklist against which all productive people are measured.

They decided “hard-working”, “productive” people wake up at the crack of dawn (hello, 5am club), then “ grind” and “hustle” their faces off the exact same level every day.

They decided human beings work on a 24 hour clock (which funnily enough is how long the male hormone cycle is), and thus and deviation from complete and utter grind would probably be down to the low caliber of your work ethic. 

Now, this is just what the Productivity-verse is: a fraternity.

Somehow, though, women are systematically gaslit into believing there is something wrong with them when they don’t meet these arbitrary standards.

But we’re not here to complain. 

KPIs For The Productive Woman.

Instead, I come to you with a proposal: the Productivity Sorority! 

Sounds fun, doesn’t it?

That’s because it is. 

Here, we sleep. We eat food that supports our hormones instead of fighting them. We can say words like “menstruation” and “menopause” out loud.

But most of all: we don’t measure productivity day-by-day. Instead, we measure month-by-month (or cycle-by-cycle).

Counterproductive “productivity hacks” from the man-overse. 

We know they mean well, but sometimes when people give advice, they are just repackaging their own experiences under the pretense that what worked for them will work for you. 

So today, let’s talk about some of the advice productive women might benefit from avoiding.

#1: Wake up at 5am. 

There is a funny endocrinological phenomenon that takes place between around 3-6am in the male body. At this time of day, the male body experiences a surge in testosterone unrivaled by any other hour.

It’s an interesting coincidence, considering the narrative that waking up super early is this superpower possessed by those who are the most successful people.

It’s also interesting that this phenomenon does not take place in women to the same extent due to their much lower levels of testosterone.

So…female hormones don’t peak at 5am? Nope.

And it’s time to stop acting like they should, just because the Productivity Fraternity says so. 

Importantly, it’s not to say that getting a head start on your day isn’t beneficial, but maybe we should start acknowledging that this looks different for those who have a month-long hormone cycle. 

For starters, maybe you can finally give yourself permission to wake up at 7am instead of the crack of dawn, and even to sleep in for a couple more hours when you’re menstruating. 

#2: Push through the pain (“stay hard!”)

Many women go their entire lives undiagnosed with serious menstrual disorders like endometriosis, PCOS, and uterine fibroids. Chances are you or someone you know is living their lives with a condition like this and “pushing through the pain” completely unnecessarily.

Instead of gaslighting ourselves, let’s advocate for our health. 

It’s not “in your head”. Your pain is real. 

(Problem-solvers, sell us a solution!)

The moment you start doing something about it is a moment of empowerment, not weakness or laziness.

#3: Hit the gym every single day. 

Here’s a crazy hypothetical for ya: imagine if every single month you had to regrow and then shed the lining of an entire organ. 

Do you think it would take a lot of energy? Do you think you might need more hours of sleep at that point in the month? Maybe fewer social commitments. 

It’s not a trick question! Shedding the lining of your uterus does take a bunch of energy. 

And…it’s not hypothetical. 

So why has being on your period become this competitive sport of “who can hide it the best”?  

Your body needs time to rest. I hate to break it to you. 

Just more stuff to do. 

There is a risk to going against the male version of productivity and following the approach that actually aligns with your hormones. 

In practice, it can feel like a lot of extra work.

It can feel like on top of having to worry about remembering pads on the right days, you also have to remember to eat sweet potatoes during your luteal phase (which requires you to both know when you are in the luteal phase and also remember to buy sweet potatoes), and cram all your high-energy, difficult tasks into the teensy window in which you ovulate.

Ah, the trials and tribulations of the “productive” life. 

Alas, the absolute last thing a busy woman needs in her life is an even longer to-do list.

(God bless her Notes app- we know it contains multitudes.)

No Woman Is An Island

The biggest myth the productivity world perpetuates is that success is merely a product of individual effort, when really successful people have dozens of supporters, mentors, friends, partners, and kind strangers behind them.

Rewriting the rules to being your most productive self is a big ask. So let’s start small. After all, productivity isn’t a competition.

You get to ask for help, lean on your community, and take one step at a time.

Thought To Action 

1. Draw Your Connection Map: Write down five people or communities—old friends, classmates, mentors—you’d like to reconnect with or better understand. Choose one and take a small step (message, coffee invite, honest hello).
2. Practice a Micro Habit: Pick something meaningful you stopped doing (writing, hiking, reading quietly). Commit to just five minutes a day — it’s the momentum that matters.
3. Turn Discomfort Into Question Curiosity: Instead of “Why did I fail?”, ask “What did this effort teach me about what matters?”.
4. Document Your Slow Wins: Keep a tiny journal of weekly wins — not outcomes, but efforts that felt worth doing (like choosing mindful reading over passive scrolling). Let this remind you how small actions accumulate meaning.
5. End With Gratitude + Intention: Close your reflection session with gratitude for the effort you showed, then set a gentle intention for the coming week.

Sources 

Here are some of the sources I used to develop the ideas I write about in this post. Three of them are books I have read in the past few years, which I revisited for this week. I highly recommend them all!

• Caroline Criado Perez – Invisible Women
• Matthew Walker – Why We Sleep
• Malcolm Gladwell – Outliers

Citation: 

Brambilla, Donald J., et al. “The Effect of Diurnal Variation on Clinical Measurement of Serum Testosterone and Other Sex Hormone Levels in Men.” The Journal of Clinical Endocrinology & Metabolism, vol. 94, no. 3, 1 Mar. 2009, pp. 907–913, https://doi.org/10.1210/jc.2008-1902. Accessed 10 Jan. 2022.

Criado Perez, Caroline. Invisible Women: Data Bias in a World Designed for Men. S.L., Harry N Abrams, 7 Mar. 2019.

Gladwell, Malcolm. Outliers: The Story of Success. New York, Back Bay Books, 18 Nov. 2008.Walker, Matthew P. Why We Sleep : The New Science of Sleep and Dreams. 2017. UK, Penguin Books, 2017.

The post The Controversial Secrets Of Productive Women appeared first on Green Also Green.

“Doubt never announces itself with loud footsteps or broken doors; it slips quietly into the room, carrying the dust of old memories, unfinished healing, and fears you believed you’d already outgrown. It knows precisely where you’re tender, exactly where to press, and how to make you question the very ground you stand on.” – Cyndi Stuart

When you’re a kid, you can be anything.

When you’re five, it’s cute if you want to be a doctor, artist, mom, Arctic explorer, and rock star. It’s one for each weekday, and then you can take the weekends off, right? 

All it takes to make new friends is to show them what you just pulled out of your nose.

It’s okay to say things like “I don’t know”, or to change your mind. One day, you can want to be a Michelin chef, and another day, an astronaut. 

You have freedom, encouragement, and options in abundance. 

In fact, when I was still in pre-adolescence, I remember feeling the same way. 

And why not?

I loved to write stories, put on plays with my cousins, tend to my own little garden after school, and “rescue” bugs that had fallen into my grandparents’ swimming pool.

Enter: the corruption of adolescence. 

Then something happened, and I suppose it happened gradually. 

As I started to move from my pre-teen middle school years into high school, people started to ask the “what do you want to do when you grow up” question a lot more seriously. 

Now, it wasn’t cute to have five answers. It was actually an existential problem. 

Now, I had to choose classes. I had to write college applications that indicated my future plans. Most intimidatingly, I had to have an answer for everyone who asked me these questions. 

Oh, and if the honest answer was “I don’t know”? You better believe I was about to have an entire audiobook’s-worth of unsolicited advice dumped on my already-overwhelmed head. 

The overwhelm made me shrink.

I have no problem now diagnosing my seventeen-year-old self as a diehard people-pleaser. 

Ultimately, my grades were fine (and actually kinda good if I do say so myself), but I was still afraid I had fundamentally not done enough over the years. After all, I hadn’t cured cancer, gone to the moon, or the like. 

I was struggling with making big decisions. So the pressure of “reality” forced me into feeling like everything must have its justification in my life. 

Why was I studying?

To get good grades so high-ranking schools would accept me. 

Why was I pursuing X extracurricular?

Because “clever students” pursue it, and I need to show I’m one of them. 

Et cetera, and so on. 

I asked the “why” question about creative writing too. However, for this thing that had been a passion since I was a mere pipsqueak, my justification was too weak. 

“Because it’s what lights my soul on fire and cures all my heartaches” wouldn’t cut it for the college essays. 

Well… that was stupid.

Ever since I was a little kid writing stories about my grandmother’s dog and tending to the plants in my garden, I was an artist. 

There are no “if”s or “but”s about it. 

It’s who I was at my very core, and for some reason, I sought to deny it so I could turn myself into someone I thought the rest of the world wanted. 

What I thought I should be is still unclear, but it mostly involved not doing the things I actually liked because I thought the friction of pursuing things that didn’t “set my soul on fire” would somehow make me more worthy of success. 

#1: Choosing to suffer didn’t make me more worthy.

Since that time in my life, I have been on the slow, humbling path of creative recovery, gradually growing back what I tried to squash during those years with the help of figures like Rick Rubin(The Creative Act: A Way Of Being) and Julia Cameron(The Artist’s Way), and learning so much about myself in the process. 

The biggest lesson for me, however, has been to stop choosing suffering for suffering’s sake. 

With some introspection and willingness to explore different options, it’s entirely possible (some might even say inevitable), to eventually stumble upon that much-coveted ikigai. That is, you will find the convergence of what you love, what the world needs, what you can be paid for, and what you’re good at. 

#2: Listen to your jealousy.

Now, this path was not paved with good intentions I’m sorry to say. 

In fact, a lot of times, I find change is fueled by feelings like anger and jealousy, which tell us “something is missing here”, and “they have what I’m missing”. 

Being an artist is really about how you live your life, and prioritizing creativity regularly. 

If you find yourself jealous over the extent to which others are able to publicly express themselves creatively, or jealous because they actually have creative projects they’re working on, then maybe you should start working on something too. 

Your jealousy is telling you what you want your life to look like. 

Listen. 

#3: There doesn’t have to be a “point” for you to start exploring.

Of all the best things that have happened in my life, few emerged from a clear “plan”, in which there was a predetermined “reason” for every minute spent. 

In fact, I think that kind of spontaneity is part of what makes life beautiful. 

“Wanting” to write a short story, “wanting” to wear your clothes differently, “wanting” to try a new recipe, “wanting” to listen to a new genre of music, and even “wanting” to try out a life in which you are an artist is enough. 

It doesn’t always have to be about how much money you will make doing it, or how “aesthetic” it will look on your Instagram story. 

Do it because you want to. Wanting to is enough. 

The Courage To Be Like A Kid Again

There is a quote attributed to Deepak Chopra that goes, “The most creative act you will ever undertake is the act of creating yourself.” 

It means that to be an artist, you also have to live like one, and apply that creativity to embodying the identity of who you want to be. 

For me, that has meant tuning into those expansive, hopeful dreams of Little Me, and asking, “Wait…how can I make her excited about the life I’m building?”

In doing just that, I have been pleasantly surprised to find that a life of a scientist-artist-author-explorer actually is possible for me. 

In fact, it’s a lot more accessible than I once imagined. 

Thought To Action 

1. Pause and Write Your “Failure Archive”: List three things you tried that didn’t go as planned this year. Don’t fix them. Instead, just name them and how they made you feel.
2. Reframe Effort as Evidence: Track one kind of effort for two weeks (reading time, daily creative minutes, meaningful talks). Let the action be the metric, not just the outcome.
3. Create a “Growth Pause”: Pick one thing you’ll do less of (doomscrolling, chores as avoidance). Put a boundary around it and note what space that creates for something nourishing. 
4. Rediscover Joy in the Small and Slow: Read one short piece of writing without pressure—no speed goals, no expectations.
5. Set One “Next Try Intent”: Choose one thing from your failure archive and decide a small, doable step you’ll try next quarter — no perfection, just continuation.

Sources 

No external sources were used for this post. 

The post How To Stop Asking For Permission To Be An Artist appeared first on Green Also Green.

 “Success is stumbling from failure to failure with no loss of enthusiasm.” – Winston Churchill

The Duality Of Failure & Success.

Isn’t it interesting to think about how many things we have failed at versus where we have succeeded? 

Maybe it’s a cliché that the list of where we failed is almost always longer than where we succeeded. 

The rub, though, is supposed to be that failure is the other side of success- the yin and yang cosmic duality of accomplishment. 

…Also, it’s what you say to make the person “failing” feel better.

Mixed Feelings

But it’s not as simple as that every time. 

At least, not in my life. 

Overall, 2025 was a pretty good year for me. 

It was the year I turned 20, the year I read more books (for more hours) than any other year of my life, the year I got to come live in Japan, the year I climbed tall mountains and dove into oceans, and a year full of learning about myself (insert here “glow-up”, sparkling emoji, and green juices). 

Well… actually, by “learning about myself”, I mean bucketloads of tears, doubting if/why I was behind all my peers in every domain of life, wondering why I wasn’t proactive enough to get an internship, wondering if I really have what it takes to be a good leader, wondering why the people who have ghosted me ghosted me, etc. 

You get the idea. 

It has been, in a lot of ways, a year full of failure- and not the failure of motivational speeches. 

I’m talking about the unaesthetic, don’t-send-that-picture-to-ANYBODY kind of failure. 

But you know what?

Facing The Inevitable

Today I want to honor where I failed, where I fell short, and where I lost. 

Not to pressure you into “doing something” with your own failures, but just to highlight and underline one very underrated message as we step into the new year: failure is part of it. 

Your plans will change and people will disappoint you. 

Sometimes the person disappointing you will be yourself. 

You will take too long to answer someone’s text message. 

Maybe you will not give enough effort to something you care about. 

You will feel like gum on the bottom of someone’s shoe. 

You will miss a few workouts and get rejected from a long list of jobs, internships, opportunities, romantic prospects, and potential mentors.

Continue on nevertheless. 

#1: I failed at getting a summer internship.

Throughout my freshman year, I took for granted that whatever I did over the summer would be inevitably impressive, resume-boosting work that would pay me handsome sums of money which I would then put to use in some equally braggadocious, but deliberately subtle way. 

It would be all “this summer I interned at Tesla designing cars that run on discarded paper napkins and emit rainbows instead of smoke”, or “this summer I launched a startup and raised $1 million in VC rounds”. 

Otherwise, I guess I kind of hoped to conduct a breath-taking 4 months of scientific research that would warrant a Nobel Peace prize. 

Okay, okay, let’s be realistic. 

Perhaps I could at least write the next great American novel?

(Deep, wistful sigh.)

I’ll skip ahead to the end of the summer, in which none of those lofty fantasies transpired. 

Meanwhile, I got to scroll through LinkedIn and see that many of my peers had accomplished internships of their own. 

Social media being the insecurity-laser that it is, that felt awful, no matter what I did do (like knit a scarf for my dog!).

#2: I failed at reading 500 hours.

A year ago, at the start of 2025, I set a goal to read 500 hours by the end of the year. 

It seemed like a nice, round number- a big number divisible by 5, but I wanted to see if I could do it. 

In the end, did I?

Well, the short answer is no. 

The long answer is that while I failed at achieving my 500 hours, working towards it led me to read more in 2025 than I have in any year before that, totaling 297 hours for the entire year (not counting mandatory reading for school!), which averages to about 49 minutes a day.

So was it a win? Yes. 

Did I fail? Also yes.

#3: I failed in some of my relationships.

This year, I lost some people who were very dear to me, some who ghosted me suddenly without explanation, and some who drifted away gradually.

It wasn’t always my choice, and I’m certainly not unscathed by the loss of the people I care about. 

Good years, important years, I learned, are still peppered with expired relationships. 

Why? 

Because part of growth is sometimes growing apart…and as much as it hurts, that’s okay. 

As your Pinterest board would probably tell you, every ending is also a new beginning, so maybe the failure of one relationship opens us up to the success of a new one. 

Perhaps it will even open you up to a better relationship with yourself. 

#4: I failed in my fitness goals.

I moved to Japan in August of this year as part of a study abroad program with Minerva University, and I was thrilled. 

Before this year, I’d never stepped foot in Asia, and so much about living in Japan for an entire academic year would be new territory. 

So far, I have had a lot of twists and turns along the journey, from unearthing the soul-warming power of a big bowl of ramen at 3am in downtown Tokyo, to running away from city deer in Nara (terrifying, in case you were wondering). 

I have learnt how to say essential phrases like “I have no money” and “Your dog is cute” in Japanese, and have thrifted with greater thriftiness than ever before (trench coat skirt for $3, anyone?).

But on top of these unexpected wins, there has been kind of an unfortunate loss- my gym membership. 

Is it unfortunate that not having budget-friendly gym options comes at the same time as me eating more ramen and rice balls than at any other point in my life?

Yes. 

Have I categorically failed at the fitness goals I set out for myself?

Mostly. 

I tried replacing a gym membership with resistance bands and a yoga mat in my room, plus a 30 day run-everyday challenge, which went fairly well. 

Still, it just wasn’t the same. 

It worked out sometimes, but I got busy and didn’t develop a good routine around it. What I miss is actually going to the gym and doing strength training.

So, in the end, it was a fail.

How I’m Accounting For Failure In My 2026 Goals

Even at the end of a good year, there will be a list of things you failed at, things you could have done better but didn’t. 

So let’s stop letting it surprise us. 

The New Approach

In 2026, I’ll be doing a few things differently. Here are the 2 main changes, and why I chose them:

#1: Designing my environment to make failure less likely. In 2026, I’m going to make a few small, one-time changes in my environment which will hopefully reap me many benefits. 

For example, one of my goals for this year is to cut my screentime on my phone in half. (I did the terrifying mortality-math, and even three hours a day on my phone is just under ⅛ of my entire life, and that’s a little too much for me.) 

One of the easy ways to make my environment reinforce this is by setting app limits for those addictive online comfort blankets like YouTube shorts. 

I have that in place, and get the obnoxious “you’ve run out of your daily allotment of doomscrolling” hourglass once I have passed the limit. 

Another killer of any enthusiasm I might’ve had for my phone is to set it to greyscale. It’s torture for my eyeballs, but it makes me want to go out and enjoy the fresh air. 

#2: Keeping score. Codie Sanchez talks about this on her Big Deal podcast. Confidence doesn’t come from dopamine, she says. Instead, it comes from data. 

In 2025, I did not take tracking to the psychopathic level I should have, but when I did track, such as when I tracked my spending, how many hours I read each week, or even doing time audits of my day, I actually felt motivated and did better at whatever I was aiming for.

This year I’m taking it to the next level. There will be spreadsheets, and sums, and quarterly targets, and you better believe it will be both scary and rewarding by the end. 

And guess what?

In 2026, I hope to fail even more!

Thought To Action 

1. Run a Failure Audit: Write down where you fell short this year without reframing it. No silver linings. Just facts. Clarity is kinder than denial.
2. Lower the Cost of Trying Again: Change one thing in your environment that makes repeating the effort easier—fewer clicks, fewer steps, fewer excuses.
3. Keep a “Proof Log”: Track effort instead of outcomes for one month. Pages read. Applications sent. Workouts attempted. Confidence grows from receipts.
4. Practice Uneven Accounting: Let success and failure coexist on the same page. Growth is not tidy, linear, or polite.
5. Continue Without Restarting: When you miss a day, don’t reset the goal. Resume. Momentum is built by continuation, not perfection.

Sources 

No external sources were used for this post. 

The post I’m Glad I Failed More Than Ever Before In 2025 appeared first on Green Also Green.